It’s hard to know if yoga is here to stay or here but soon to go away. It’s been big before — George Harrison probably was the first purveyor of ’yoga chic’ –

but then it was replaced by reading The Camel Toe Report or aerobics or taebo or the George Foreman Grill or whatever the fitness flavor of the month happens to be. I don’t even know if it’s an exercise, meditation or just a branded look. In LA it’s for Westside women grappling with the crippling combination of free-time and affluenza and the men (usually 3 per class during ’business hours’) who prey on them.

I have known lots of people from India and none of them do Yoga… they seem far more interested in their Blackberry and cell phone dangling in a most uncool manner from their belts. Now that Madonna is a British Kaballah follower rather than a shanti-chanting yogi perhaps it will start to fade. Personally, I think the stretching and time to think is great, but I don’t want sanctimony or hallmark-calibre cliche spirituality delivered to me by a high school dropout.